XXII

As Bruce waited, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He

began to see the dim outlines of his fellow occupants of the

room,--fully seven brawny men seated in chairs about the walls. "Let's

hear you drop your rifle," one of them said.

Bruce recognized the grim voice as Simon's,--heard on one occasion

before. He let his rifle fall from his hands. He knew that only death

would be the answer to any resistance to these men. Then Simon scratched

a match, and without looking at him, bent to touch it to the wick of the

lamp.

The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing

shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room

that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched

her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at

last.

Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick

caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly.

On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and

his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge,

gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of

them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest.

Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could,

instinctively defiant.

"Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and

Dave is the principal witness."

A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin'

to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence."

The circle laughed then,--a harsh sound that was not greatly different

from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they

sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were

glowing.

"You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked.

"I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't."

"I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet

us."

Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh

interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as

if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of

cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my

house first."

He regarded the clansmen again. He _had_ missed Dave's crafty face in

the circle.

"Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember

what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day--that I gave no

man two warnings."

"I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you.

I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of

guns."

Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen,

before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it.

Bruce--you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds."

"Simon, I came up here to right wrongs--and you know it. If old wounds

are opened, I can't help it."

"And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have

come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts

would need, Bruce--that you crept into our house in the dead of night.

If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us.

You were a brave man, Bruce."

"So I can suppose you left the note?"

The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture.

"You're very keen," he said.

"Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in

her whereabouts than in this talk with you."

"The last seen of her, she was going up a hill with Dave. When Dave

returns you can ask him."

The bearded man opposite from Simon uttered a short syllable of a laugh.

"And it don't look like he's going to return," he said. The knowing

look on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curiously, Simon's face

flushed, and he whirled in his chair.

"Do you mean anything in particular, Old Bill?" he demanded.

"It looks to me like maybe Dave's forgot a lot of things you told him,

and he and Linda are havin' a little sparkin' time together out in the

brush."

The idea seemed to please the clan. But Simon's eyes glowed, and Bruce

himself felt the beginnings of a blind rage that might, unless he held

hard upon it, hurl him against their remorseless weapons. "I don't want

any more such talk out of you, Old Bill," Simon reproved him, "and we've

talked enough, anyway." His keen eyes studied Bruce's flushed face. "One

of you give our guest a chair and fix him up in it with a thong. We

don't want him flying off the coop and getting shot until we're done

talking to him."

One of the clansmen pushed a chair forward with sudden force, striking

Bruce in the knees and almost knocking him over. The circle leered, and

he sat down in it with as much ease as possible. Then one of the men

looped his arms to the arms of the chair with thongs of buckskin.

Another thong was tied about his ankles. Then the clansmen went back to

their chairs.

"I really don't see the use of all these dramatics," Bruce said coldly.

"And I don't particularly like veiled threats. At present I seem to be

in your hands."

"You don't seem to be," Simon answered with reddening eyes. "You are."

"I have no intention of saying I'm sorry I didn't heed the threats you

gave me before--and as to those I've heard to-night--they're not going

to do you any good, either. It is true that you found me in the house

you occupy in the dead of night--but it isn't your house to start with.

What a man seizes by murder isn't his."

"What a man holds with a hard fist and his rifle--in these

mountains--_is_ his," Simon contradicted him.

"Besides, you got me here with a trick," Bruce went on without heeding

him. "So don't pretend that any wickedness you do to-night was justified

by my coming. You'll have to answer for it just the same."

Simon leaned forward in his chair. His dark eyes glowed in the

lamplight. "I've heard such talk as that before," he said. "I expect

your own father talked like that a few times himself."

The words seemed to strike straight home to the gathered Turners. The

moment was breathless, weighted with suspense. All of them seemed

straining in their chairs.

Bruce's head bowed, but the veins stood out beneath the short hair on

his temples, and his lips trembled when he answered. "That was a greater

wickedness than anything--_anything_ you can do to-night. And you'll

have to answer for it all the more."

He spoke the last sentence with a calm assurance. Though spoken softly,

the words rang clear. But the answer of the evil-hearted man before him

was only a laugh.

"And there's one thing more I want to make clear," Bruce went on in the

strong voice of a man who had conquered his terror. And it was not

because he did not realize his danger. He was in the hands of the

Turners, and he knew that Simon had spoken certain words that, if for no

other reason than his reputation with his followers, he would have to

make good. Bruce knew that no moment of his life was ever fraught with

greater peril. But the fact itself that there were no doors of escape

open to him, and he was face to face with his destiny, steadied him all

the more.

The boy that had been wakened in his bed at home by the ring of the

'phone bell had wholly vanished now. A man of the wild places had come

instead, stern and courageous and unflinching.

"Everything is tolerable clear to us already," Simon said, "except your

sentence."

"I want you to know that I refuse to be impressed with this judicial

attitude of you and your blackguard followers," Bruce went on. "This

gathering of the group of you doesn't make any evil that you do any less

wrong, or the payment you'll have to make any less sure. It lies wholly

in your power to kill me while I'm sitting here, and I haven't much hope

but that you'll do it. But let me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed

and crime can go on only so long. You've been kings up here, and you

think the law can't reach you. But it will--believe me, it will."

"And this was the man who was going to begin the blood-feud--already

hollering about the law," Simon said to his followers. He turned to

Bruce. "It's plain that Dave isn't going to come. I'll have to be the

chief witness myself, after all. However, Dave told me all that I needed

to know. The first question I have to ask of you, Folger, is the

whereabouts of that agreement between your late lamented father and the

late lamented Matthew Ross, according to what the trapper Hudson told

you a few days ago."

Bruce was strong enough to laugh in his bonds. "Up to this time I have

given you and your murderous crowd credit for at least natural

intelligence," he replied, "but I see I was mistaken--or you wouldn't

expect an answer to that question."

"Do you mean you don't know its whereabouts?"

"I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing whether I know or not. I

just refuse to answer."

"I trust the ropes are tight enough about your wrists."

"Plenty tight, thank you. They are cutting the flesh so it bleeds."

"How would you like them some tighter?"

"Pull them till they cut my arms off, and you won't get a civil answer

out of me. In fact--" and the man's eyes blazed--"I'm tired of talking

to this outlaw crowd. And the sooner you do what you're going to do, the

better it will suit me."

"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment--we

understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?"

Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's

face.

"That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so

we've decided to let you have your way. It's open--it's been open since

you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave--and men don't

disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This

is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own

way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father

before you thought he could stand against us--but he's been lying still

a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never

to take back a threat--but always to make it good."

Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen

gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of

them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their

eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was

charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near.

Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw

there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was

beginning to run true to form. His dark passions were slowly mastering

him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of

cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes

such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted

cliffs.

All at once Simon laughed,--a sharp, hoarse sound that had, in its

overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed

to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious

expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one

thing--the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration.

As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face

darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They

understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such

sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was

feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his

vision.

"We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither

Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only

knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment

all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty

bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we _ought_ to

do--we're just going to let you lay out all night--in the pasture--with

your feet tied and your hands behind your back."

No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.

"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're

warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the

place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something

that's laying there so it will be more pleasant."

Again he paused. Bruce looked up.

"The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It

was killed last night by the Killer--the old grizzly that maybe you've

heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night

by the carcass and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another

meal--something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs

true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the

carcass away--down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to

leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it."

Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the

clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such

suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him.

And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be

of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that

the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair

would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they

thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed

that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a

distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carcass

should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm

in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan,

and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask

questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next

morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements

merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the

grizzlies.

But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They

hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,--the facts that

Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied

Simon's mind, and he knew--in a moment's thought--that something more

than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his passion was

ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not

know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had

learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men

were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly

from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted.

The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and

Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room.